This research examines the rise of voluntary associations of ¡°donkey friends,¡± accompanied by the emergence of new types of cultural identities, interpersonal relationships, and social networks in contemporary urban China. At the end of the 1990s, the native term ¡°donkey friend¡± (l¨¹you ¿ÓÑ) became a popular self-identifier for Chinese backpackers who formed voluntary communities to facilitate group travels and many collective activities. My research is based on three months of preliminary field research in 2003 and 2004, and a year of fieldwork in 2005 in Beijing, Yunnan Province and Inner Mongolia. I carried out participant observation in three voluntary donkey friend communities, and conducted anthropological interviews with donkey friends, journalists, tourist guides, professors, and publishers. My field research was multisited, including face-to-face interaction in different locations and Internet research. The Internet phase is important because backpacker travel has co-evolved with the Internet forums in China. Both online interaction and offline travel experience served to cultivate a sense of fellowship among travelers. Donkey friend communities have not only provided social and emotional support for their members, but also allowed individuals to engage in various voluntary projects based on free association, self regulation, and practices of many democratic values. By contextualizing this phenomenon with the retreat of the state from many public realms of Chinese society, I argue that donkey friend community demonstrates the rise of the new public sphere of middle class in post-socialist urban China. Participants in this sphere no longer pose a direct threat to the state, but aim to promote cultural change, challenge cultural values, and raise public consciousness. They seek to practice democratic values and resolve specific social problems. This research not only offers an ethnographically-based study of new cultural forms that accompany the development of backpacker tourism in China, but also contributes to the anthropology of China by providing a detailed analysis of the formation of new urban communities and public spheres in which neoliberal values of production and consumption can be challenged by the emergence of new forms of cultural identities, horizontal ties, and collective actions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-03182008-130528 |
| Date | 17 June 2008 |
| Creators | Zhang, Ning |
| Contributors | Andrew J. Strathern, Nicole Constable, Joseph Alter, Evelyn S. Rawski |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-03182008-130528/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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